Absolute Zero
by Rosie Real
Summary: This is a medical thriller written in my version of King. It is supposed to be a cross between The Hot Zone and a Kingesque horror. Viral Horror? Ch. 2 now added!
1. A Life Like Lightning

CHAPTER ONE

A Life Like Lightning

One…

Epidemic

Dr. Jara Rishaka ambled lazily down the hallway of the brand new ward of the brand new hospital in the brand new neighborhood of very old Phoenix, Arizona. The new neighborhood was actually not _completely_ new but, newly renovated. The new hospital was actually, truly new. Building was only completed two years ago. _Morton Hospital_ it was called. Yup, calm place. Nothing like Nairobi… (This always caused a laugh of relief in Jara's chest.) The new ward was the _Epidemiology Ward_. Oh yes… the Epidemiology Ward… a hellishly dangerous place—but still… nothing like Nairobi. ("Ah ha!" Jara snorted as she walked by the hematology lab.) The new ward was the only ward in the entire hospital that had recently taken in the "attending RN" custom. This new system was basically a partnering between an Epidemiologist MD and a specially trained Epidemiology RN. The RN follows the MD around to his/her assignments and helps out with the random shit that happens about the ward… which is always full of boring, yet dangerous cases of things such as HIV, and Influenza ranging from A to C. Yeah, a pretty uneventful day was always threatening.

"Hey! Jara!" Alice Reed, Jara's attending RN, shouted as she ran towards her doctor waving her hands madly. "AGH!" Jara covered her face in fake-fear as Alice wrapped her arms around her doctor. "I missed yooooou!" She shouted. "Great, get offa' me. I can't breath!" The Lithuanian doctor cried. Alice backed up and stared at Jara with her big eyes before giving her a peck on the cheek and running off again. "We have a meeting tonight at six! Be there or get fired!" Alice called as she ran down the hall towards the nurses' lounge. "Ah damn it all…" Jara muttered to herself. She turned around on her left foot and began walking (again lazily) towards the hematology lab. "Screw you all to hell," she said to Dr. Reynolds as she passed him. "What?" He said looking up from his microscope, which was staring down at a petri dish of Influenza B blood. "You're the one that initiated that meeting aren't you?" She said accusingly, but doubtfully. She wasn't sure _who_ it was that initiated the meeting but whoever it was… they were definitely in for a beating. Jara hated meetings. It was just like being back in high school. Lectures and talking forever more to come… It was a horrible, horrible thing to do to a person.

"Let's keep this meeting rather brief, shall we people?" Dr. Makan Akaii said. Jara snorted. Whenever he said that it always meant a long, long evening was at hand. Dr. Akaii was the chief surgeon and head of the Epidemiology ward. This ward basically had a hospital all its own for fear of infectious diseases spreading to the other patients. There was an area for bacteriology and one for virology. Jara worked in the virology sect. Dr. Akaii worked in the bacteriology sect but was also highly trained in virology.

"We have a new epidemic plaguing us here in virology," The handsome Hawaiian continued. Jara always admired him. He was gorgeous and very popular among the ladies. "It's nothing big. Not much more than a mutogenic strain of Influenza most likely. That's at least what the symptoms point to. The only thing I wanted to warn you folks about is the threat of transmission among other patients as well as staff. It's infection rate among the community is very alarming and we're so damn lucky that it's nothing more than an Orthomyxovirus. If this were anything like an Arenavirus we'd already be six feet under from the frigging infection rate," he said with odd emphasis on the types of viruses. _Great,_ Jara thought. _We're being briefed about a freaking FLU VIRUS… I could care less if I got the flu while working…_ She began to angrily tear her schedule to pieces. She allowed herself to tear up to six o'clock off but forced herself to stop when she realized she wouldn't know what the hell she was doing after this meeting. Jara suddenly looked up when she saw Alice stand. "Alice?" She watched in horror as her nurse walked up next to Akaii. "What is _she_ doing up there?" She muttered to herself. _Ohhh… if Alice has _anything_ to do with the meeting she is _so_ sleeping on the couch tonight…_ Jara grumbled to herself as her mind rambled. "We just want to warn you because one of my patients died this morning after being diagnosed with this virus," Alice said. _One of _your_ patients? _Jara's mind growled. "The woman was over seventy years old and the virus only caused flu symptoms. However we want to warn you that it is just as dangerous to the elderly as the flu is," Alice announced. "So be warned. We're going to send blood samples to the lab and have it looked at and maybe soon we'll be able to come up with a simple vaccine like that of the flu. There is no need for barrier nursing, just use the basic sterility techniques, and use them well. Thanks for your attention, and have a good night," the little, blonde nurse said as she sat back down in her chair. "Thank you Ms. Reed," Dr. Akaii said as he smiled at her. She smiled back. "No trouble."

"Alright people, get back to your positions and have a nice evening," Akaii said as he walked out of the room.

"How was I?" Alice asked nervously as she and Jara walked out of the meeting room. "Great," Jara forced a smile. _You evil little scum…_ She was still growling in her head. She hated the meetings… although she had to admit Alice looked very professional up there. It was quite a turn on.

"Hey Dr. Rishaka, what's going on tonight? Did you get called to that meeting?" Dr. Nico Gitano said as Jara and Alice walked into the ICU where there were many of those "flu" patients being treated. "Shut up," Jara joked as Nico snorted. He was happy because he didn't have to go to the meeting. He was working in the ICU and doctors working in any trauma-esque units were to remain in their positions and skip meetings. Alice giggled when Nico whisked his hand through her forever-silky-nice sandy hair. He was a handsome Italian doctor from Venice. He spoke with such a strong accent that without proper Nico-knowledge you would never understand. Jara had known him since she first started working in Morton Hospital. Both she and Nico were part of the original staff. They were of the first group signed into the hospital when it was first built. Alice had come about a half-year later. Jara had taken an immediate liking to her pretty new nurse and apparently Alice had taken an immediate liking for her sexy new doctor because they began dating only three weeks after being assigned to each other. Nico always commented how it was a shame Jara's sexual orientation didn't follow his because he'd love to have a go with her. She'd always laugh and tell him she wouldn't mind a threesome with Alice and him. As of yet he hadn't completely turned down the idea. Jara didn't think his girlfriend would like that very much but hey… he was kinda' cute. She didn't think it'd kill her to be bi… after all, Alice was.

Jara watched as Nico administered an IV to a young woman's arm. "You alright?" He asked the girl who looked rather sleepy. However in Nico-English it sounded more like _y'arite?_ The girl understood the simple two word Italian-puzzle and nodded her head yes. Jara smiled. Her smiled faded a second later when she heard a gasp. "Nico!" She screamed as she ran towards a middle-aged man in the other bed. (Each ICU room had two beds, the Epidemiology Ward's ICU rooms were specially made for viral/bacterial containment so these two patients both had the same "flu" virus…) "What's wrong with him!" Alice shrieked. "I don't know—intubate him! Intubate him!" Jara shouted as Nico grabbed an ambubag and began to feed the tube though the man. Jara held his head in place as he gasped harder. His face began to turn a sick carmine. "Hurry! Hurry!" Alice cried as she held the convulsing man down. "Jara! Move!" Nico abandoned the ambubag when dark, arterial blood began to flow from the man's nose and mouth. He quickly pulled Jara's hands away from the patient's face. "Screw the regular techniques! We need barrier nursing!" Jara commanded as she ran to the cabinets in the corner of the room and pulled out facemasks and gowns. "Quick! Put these on and then reintubate him," she shouted. "This is _no_ flu virus," Nico observed. "No shit," Jara said as she pulled her mask on. "This is a hemorrhagic fever."


	2. 2: Penitence

CHAPTER ONE

A Life Like Lightning

Two…

Penitence

"I can't believe this!" Nico roared as he thrust the defibrillators onto the gasping man's chest. "Come on!" Jara screamed through her protective mask. Alice was sobbing as she monitored the electrocardiogram. "You can't die! This is a _freaking flu virus!_" She screamed. "Keep going!" Jara commanded the Italian doctor. "I'll fry him!" Nico cried as he continued to try the defibrillators. "He's gone," Alice announced a moment later. "Shit!" Nico and Jara cursed in semi-unison. "We need him to be contained, STAT!" Jara commanded as she walked over to the other girl in the room. She was shaking madly. "H-he died!" She shrieked. "It's okay, honey. It's okay. We'll have this contained in no time, it was probably just a rare symptom," Nico tried to comfort the girl. Jara picked up the telephone and called Dr. Akaii. "Makan," she said. "Dr. Rishaka? What seems to be the problem?" Akaii asked. "Makan, the man in ICU containment room A64 just fucking hemorrhaged to death! He was proven to have the _same freaking virus_ as the rest of them! It was the same one and he _bled to death_!" She roared into the telephone. She heard a foreign curse on the other line before Dr. Akaii spoke up. "I've found the records. There's another girl in the room, correct?" He asked. "Yeah, what should we do with her?" Jara asked. "Bring her to the slammer, she needs to be quarantined. STAT! Leave the body in the room and I'll bring in workers from the sub, just hurry up and quarantine the girl!"

"It's okay, it's okay," Nico attempted to comfort the sobbing girl again as he, Jara, and Alice raced down the hallway towards the containment rooms, a.k.a. the slammer. "Move aside! We have a HF patient coming in!" Nico screamed to the workers outside the dorms as he wheeled the girl's stretcher into one of the containment rooms. "I don't want to be quarantined! I don't want to be quarantined! I want to go home!" The thirteen-year-old girl wailed. "Hey, it's okay. You'll be okay. We have really good workers in the lab. They'll id the virus and make a sera for it before you even get a bloody nose," Nico said. "Nico!" Jara thwacked the back of his head. "Sorry! I'm not good at comforting!"

"Take good care of her. Be really careful. This damn virus works like fucking _Ebola_," Jara told the medics in the slammer. "Ebola?" One of the doctors spoke up. "Dr. Rishaka we can't have anything _remotely like _Ebola in this place… It will spread and kill the entire US!" The tiny doctor squeaked. "I know, I know. I'm going to talk to Dr. Akaii and see what we can do. He'll know. Just be careful Mokena," Jara told the little four-foot-eight doctor. Dr. Kiro Mokena was somewhere around thirty-two years old and he looked like a twelve-year-old boy. He sounded like one too. His sweet little voice always reminded Jara of her little cousin. "I will… just please hurry back," Mokena said as Jara, Nico, and Alice filed out of the slammer's gray zone.

"Dr. Akaii!" The three medics rambled his name over and over in a jumble as they ran insanely into Dr. Akaii's office. Dr. Akaii held up a 'one minute' finger as he continued to speak on the telephone. "Thank you so much. I'll send someone to meet you at the airport," he finished before hanging up. "Dr. Akaii! What are we supposed to do? One man is already dead and many more have the virus! It's _highly_ transmissible!" Jara cried while Alice was shouting: "We're all going to get the virus! It's like Ebola! Ebola!" at the same time that Nico was wailing, "it must be a filovirus! It can't be a flu-related disease! It's a _hemorrhagic fever_!" Dr. Akaii's head began to spin. "Quiet!" He roared. The three medics stood silently at attention. "That was the CIA head on the telephone," Dr. Makan Akaii said. "The CIA? What do they have to do with—" Jara began before Akaii held up a 'be quiet' hand. She shut her mouth. "With the new awareness of diseases around the world, the CIA has recently set up a centre for epidemiology and secret studies. Like the USAMRIID. So they're going to send some agents who work in that field to help us. They were highly trained at the CDC, they'll know what to do," he finished. "I want you, Dr. Rishaka to go meet the agents at the Phoenix Airport tonight at six and bring them to the hospital. For the time being we'll continue to contain."

Jara cursed to herself that evening at she drove to the Phoenix Airport. "Agents? CIA Agents? What will _they_ do?" She wondered out loud as she drove into the parking lot.

"Hey! CIA Agents! Over here!" Jara shouted as she stood on a table near the filing port. When she saw a couple of people in white coats embarrassingly smacking their foreheads, she knew those were her people. "Hey! Over here!" She shouted as she ran over to them. There were two doctors: a man and a woman. The woman was tall and model figured. The man was tall and had the body of a god. She was surprised to be able to see it through his lab coat and scrubs… and she was rather surprised she cared to see it. "I'm Dr. Jara Rishaka of the Morton Hospital! Come on! We can't contain the damn thing for long!" She cried. "Well hold up," the woman said in a deep French accent. "We need information first. You need to bring us there and we need to teach you about proper viral barrier techniques," she said. "My name is Dr. Rain Rousseau and this is Dr. Khalil Rhashab," Dr. Rousseau narrated. "Hi," Jara said to Dr. Rhashab. He waved and smiled. "Hey," he said in a perfect voice. "Well, come on! We can get acquainted on the ride to hospital!"

She could swear that Dr. Rhashab was asleep in the back… she had Dr. Rousseau in the front next to her. "So what we want you all to do is set up a hot zone in the Epidemiology Ward. You know the levels, you'll need a gray zone of course… you'll need different levels of entrance and study… etcetera, etcetera," she said. "Okay, we have a slammer and a submarine, so… we're not completely in a foxhole," Jara said. "That's good, but with both those you don't have a hot zone?" Dr. Rousseau looked rather confused. "No," Jara stated rather simply for the situation. "We'll set one up for you," both the women jumped when Dr. Rhashab spoke up randomly from the back. "I thought you were asleep, you little…" Dr. Rousseau couldn't think of anything to call him. She had a fetish for insults when someone startled her… but usually couldn't think fast enough to _not_ ruin her thunder…

"Wow, this is one _humongous _hospital," Dr. Rhashab observed as Jara led them up to the Epidemiology Ward. "Well, it's new," Jara couldn't really think of a pompous reason for the large status of the hospital. "So where's the containment ward?" Dr. Rousseau asked. "This way," Jara pointed towards the ICU.

"Oh my God!" Dr. Rousseau shrieked when she saw case pictures. "This looks like—" she was interrupted. "Ebola," Jara said. "Indeed," Rain agreed. "Have the lab technicians identified the class of virus yet?" Dr. Rhashab asked. "Not yet, but maybe they're done now. We can take a walk down to the lab if you want," Jara suggested. "It's necessary. We need to know what this is," Rain put in. "Okay, follow me," Jara led the way again.

"So is this a hematology lab or…" Dr. Rhashab began. "It's a level four testing lab," Jara said. "So you _do_ have a hot zone," Rain assumed. "Well, sort of I guess, we just don't have containment for level four patients. The slammer is basically meant (and practiced for) human rabies cases and things like that," Jara answered, "not for Ebola."

"Hello?" Jara led the pathologist agents through the gray zone and knocked on the lab door. The microphone on the outside of the door clicked and a man's voice sounded. "Put on the Racals," Dr. Richter Germain commanded. After a few minutes of senseless struggling Jara and the pathologists had successfully gotten into the Racal space suits. Jara knocked again. "Ready?" Dr. Germain's voice sounded. "Yup," Dr. Rhashab said eagerly from the background. His mocha cheeks were turning a pale red from struggling with the suit. "Are you absolutely sure?" Dr. Germain pressed. "Yes," Jara confirmed before the lock clicked open. The little red light on the door turned green which meant that the three doctors had exactly sixty seconds to enter the lab before it sealed shut again. If Dr. Germain had not opened it from the inside Jara would have had to type in a ten-number code… very hard to remember…

"Come in quickly," Jara said to Dr. Rousseau and Dr. Rhashab. They moved as quickly as they could in the fluffy Racal suits. Jara spotted Dr. Germain over by one of the microscopy stations with a tiny blood agar. Jara wasn't sure looking through the Racal faceplate, but she could swear his features were white with worry. "Are you ready to see this?" He asked. "We're ready," Jara said as she walked over to the microscope. She leaned in when Dr. Germain backed up. "Oh my God!" She cried. The virus swirling madly in the agar looked nothing like the circular flu virus but like the only viruses that are long, and threaded… a filovirus. Stretch-Rabies. It looked almost exactly like Ebola Zaire except for one difference: It looked like the microscopic creatures had… eyes? And paws. They looked more like animals than cells. "They look like frigging otters!" Jara commented as she backed up. "Are you sure this is a virus?" She asked. Dr. Germain nodded, "it responds to ELISA's and florescence and stuff… it's too small to be anything else and upon contact with the blood you get an Ebola-like sickness." Jara sighed. "What did we do?" She moaned. "We're the human race… we've destroyed nature… Mother Nature is seeking revenge," Dr. Rousseau commented. Dr. Rhashab laughed rather insanely after he peeked into the microscope, "should we start our penitence now?" he said.


End file.
